


Trading Tales

by Moonlitdarksword



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alcohol, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Papa Schnee is an asshole, Reminiscing, Speculative Backstory, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:24:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6582952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonlitdarksword/pseuds/Moonlitdarksword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finding some time off in their respective missions, Qrow and Winter find each other in a bar. And before they realised it, they were talking about everything, from where they came from to where they were going.</p><p>Written for the r/rwby April 2016 Moncon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trading Tales

Whatever reservations Winter held regarding Qrow Branwen, she could at least admit that he knew a few good bars.  
It had been a few months since the Fall of Beacon, as it had come to be known, and the brass had sent her on what felt like a journey across the entire world. Without the CCTS, practically every foreign Atlesian base had gone dark, and the Specialists were called to investigate their status. Winter had been flying for weeks, starting with the borderlands of Vale and journeying to the tropical plains of Mistral, and roughly half the time she would be dragged into a fight. Usually, when she found one of the garrisons she was assigned to inspect, she ran into the best-case scenario and found the place running more or less as usual, and whenever she could, she would help them fend off Grimm, the White Fang or scared, angry civilians. Sometimes, she would see the consequences of the victory of these outside forces and find a base filled with corpses, or worse, with absolutely nothing. On one occasion, the inspection started off normally, but then she realised that the staff where not soldiers, but opportunistic mutineers, around the time they led her into a corner and pointed their guns at her. She put down those men and women with less pity then she would the Grimm, if that were possible.  
They had encountered each other by chance, or at least she thought they did. Though she had not learned as much about how his mind worked as she would have liked, that confident, ever so infuriating grin made her suspect that their meeting was no mere coincidence. He offered her a drink, and she confessed to herself that she direly needed one, especially after the nightmare that was her last investigation.

The bar he had suggested was a wine cellar in the outskirts of the capital of Mistral. All around them were short alcoves of scarlet brick and dusty concrete floors, the far walls stacked with massive barrels. The atmosphere was musty with the smell of fine wine, aging liquor and cigar smoke, and the narrow space was basked in twilight, the weak lamps both overhead and on the tables revealing a small number of souls. In fact, the only face she could make out was the gaunt, tired one sat next to her at the bar. She imagined she looked somewhat similar. She chuckled ruefully as she swirled the amber liquid in her short glass. To think that less than a year ago, she would not allow herself to be caught dead in a place like this, yet here she was.  
‘So,’ he sighed, stirring her from her thoughts as he stared at his own drink, ‘you gonna tell me what you’ve been doing lately?’ She raised an eyebrow as he turned to face her, but didn’t allow herself to show her surprise when she saw the look in his eyes. She expected many things, but genuine concern was not one of them. ‘Whatever’s eating you, it’ll help to talk about it.’  
She looked between him and her drink, unsure of how to respond. She let out a silent breath, raising her glass to her lips. She did not tilt the liquid into her mouth, and simply stared at the drink in her hand for a few moments. Eventually, she set down the glass, and started talking.  
‘I’ve been assigned to investigate the bases that have gone dark in the wake of the Fall,’ she told him. ‘It’s been mostly legwork. Sometimes, the Grimm would show up to make things exciting, but it’s mostly speaking from the commander officer and perusing their files.’  
‘So how’d that go?’ he asked, curious yet sombre.  
‘Things are mostly fine in those bases,’ she reported, shrugging her shoulders sullenly. ‘A few were overrun, and there was one mutiny, but the last one I visited...’ She took a sip from her glass, and let out a shaky breath. ‘From what I could understand from the base’s systems, it had apparently been converted into a makeshift refugee camp. I couldn’t stay long, since I wasn’t exactly invited in.’  
‘Oh?’ his eyes went eyes, his attention now fully engaged.  
‘When I got there, there were no Atlesian soldiers, nor any refugees,’ she snarled, staring down on the bar with her head cradled in her hands. ‘It’s a White Fang base now. Infiltration isn’t my strong suit, especially when I try to sneak up on a Faunus, so it really was a situation of in and out as fast as possible. Yet what I saw was enough to last a lifetime. I owed my cover mainly to the fact that most of them were busy piling bodies in a massive bonfire. The human bodies, at least. If the Faunus corpses I saw were any indication...’ Her breath hitched, and with a suppressed sob, she threw back her head and finished her drink in one gulp.  
‘Damn it!’ she growled, slamming the glass onto the bar. ‘I don’t understand, Qrow. How could a Faunus even consider doing something like that to their own kind?’  
‘Because the White Fang always save their worst for the Faunus who defy them,’ Qrow said matter-of-factly. He knocked on the bar, gesturing towards the empty glass as he met the bartender’s eyes. ‘In their eyes, the ones with the guts to stand up to them are something worse than those big, nasty humans, one step above the Grimm, so they treat them accordingly.’  
‘That doesn’t make it any easier to swallow,’ she hissed. ‘There were children on that bonfire. _Faunus children._ I don’t know how you can be so casual.’  
‘I’ve been in this business a long time,’ he shrugged. Winter noticed the flatness of his voice as her met her gaze. His sardonic manner was gone, replaced with pure seriousness. ‘Let me guess. This is your first time seeing something this bad, right? I’ve seen things too, Ice Queen. Acting casual’s just how I survive.’  
‘I guess I just wasn’t prepared,’ she sighed, her fingers gingerly curling around the fresh drink that had been placed in front of her. ‘In Atlas, they taught us how to deal with Grimm, how to deal with hostage situations, riots, enemy ambushes. They never taught how to deal with...this.’  
‘It’s just one of those things that can’t be taught,’ Qrow murmured. ‘You need to figure it out for yourself before it wears you down.’  
‘I see,’ she nodded slowly, taking another careful sip. ‘Tell me. What have you been doing all this time?’  
‘Errands for Ozpin,’ he replied laconically, his fingers unconsciously grasping for the cane strapped to his belt. Winter raised a sceptical eyebrow.  
‘I assume this is on a need to know basis?’ she asked pointedly. A part of her still smouldered from how the general so rudely excluded her from that discussion with Ozpin all those weeks ago. What was that drunken ruffian privy to that she was not?  
‘Yep,’ he snorted. ‘You still don’t need to know. You might one day, but not now.’ His casual sarcasm had returned, as if their previous conversation never happened. She found it infuriating to no end. ‘But I can tell you something that you might find interesting. My niece is on her way here. She’ll arrive any day now.’ Winter heard the word “niece”, and her mind was already tracing the network of associates of the people she had met, and quickly figured out who he meant.  
‘Ruby Rose?’ she asked incredulously, confirming that he was indeed talking about the one member of her sister’s team who was uncompromised. ‘She’s making the journey from Vale to Mistral on foot? With things as they are now? That’s madness!’  
‘Well, she’s not alone, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ he shrugged. Her eyes narrowed, annoyance radiating from every pore. He was so casual even about his family’s safety? He seemed to sense this, and that serious wisdom crept back into his eyes. ‘Look, all she knows—all I know, for that matter—is that Cinder and her gang said they were from Haven. She was bound to find out eventually, and not even I would be able to stop her. She might not be a Branwen like her sister, but she can look after herself.’  
‘You do realise she’s after a woman who supposedly defeated Ozpin?’ Winter remarked pointedly. Qrow hummed noncommittally. Cinder was dangerous, to be sure, but Winter was not aware of the true reason for that, nor did he feel she needed to. Not yet.  
‘Well, I couldn’t exactly keep her cooped up at home all this time, like her sister,’ he shrugged. ‘Or yours.’  
‘I didn’t like the decision either,’ Winter shot back, fuming as she sipped from her glass. The fire that dripped down her throat was nothing next to the fire in her mind. ‘Weiss deserves better than to become some...receptionist, or whatever menial task Father has no doubt prepared for her.’  
‘You don’t have to put up with it, you know,’ Qrow suggested nonchalantly. ‘You could always just try to talk it out.’  
‘If you’re suggesting that, then you clearly don’t know my father,’ Winter replied bitterly. She took another sip, disappointed with herself that her first instinct when her temper flared was to take a drink. She was going to end up like Qrow at this rate.  
‘True, true,’ he acquiesced, nodding with a thoughtful frown. Suddenly, a wolfish grin appeared on his face. ‘I only knew him a little bit, but it was a long time ago.’  
‘Really?’ she asked, her face and tone carefully neutral. ‘In what capacity do you claim to him?’  
‘Well,’ he intoned, his smile spreading even further, ‘to make a long story short, I punched him in the face.’ Winter was taken aback by the sudden admission. She balked silently for a minute. Qrow briefly wondered whether he had overstepped the mark, but was quickly relieved when he heard it. A snort, and then a chuckle.  
‘Very well,’ she chortled, wearing a wry smile as she raised her glass. ‘Tell me the long story.’

‘It happened about twenty...four years ago?’ he began. He looked up, raising and curling fingers as he calculated the dates. ‘Yeah, twenty-four. Anyway, they were hosting the Vytal Festival in Vacuo that year, and it wasn’t like in this day and age where just any group of clowns could sign up. Only the best of the best could get in, and well, you didn’t get much better than Team STRQ.  
‘We were fresh off the airship when we ran into trouble, and I’m not talking about how a sandstorm kicked up just as we landed and we got a mouthful of the stuff as soon as the ramp went down. It was the fact that someone else apparently had the same problem, and he was letting everyone who’d listen know about it. Now, I’m hearing this voice that’s louder than a Bullhead engine, and I turn around and see this rail-thin kid in a fancy white suit yelling at this bigger guy who had this look on his face like he was used to dealing with his crap. It was Summer, ever the friendly one, who decided to approach them. They introduced themselves as James Ironwood and Silbern Schnee of Team JSPR from Atlas, though I’m sure you could have guessed where this was going. Jimmy was polite, if a little hesitant to shake her hand. He was such a stiff even back then, and he had that bearing that told you that he was gonna be a soldier from the day he was born. Schnee on the other hand, rejected the handshake. Said his suit was dirty enough, that he didn’t want to catch anything from Vale.’  
‘So is that when you decided to strike my father?’ Winter asked contemplatively. Her attention was still on Qrow’s words, though she didn’t seem the least bit surprised about what he said.  
‘Not yet,’ he teased. ‘But from that moment on, we hated him. To be honest, out of all the people we regularly talked to during our stay in Shade, I don’t think any of us liked him, but that didn’t stop him from thinking he was some kind of ladies’ man. He’d come up to Summer and Raven, compliment their pretty faces, and call them Valish idiots once their backs were turned. For me, he’d just skip straight to step two. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have anything to back up his bluster. He could really hold his own in a fight; though I’m sure you knew that, considering you have his Semblance. He was always looking for a chance to prove how much better he was than everybody else, both inside the ring and out of it. But Jimmy got along okay with us, and the other two were really friendly to all the Vale kids as if trying make up for all his bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, your dad was incredibly skilled, but I think that talent was the only thing that held his team together; that and Jimmy’s comparable skill at handling him.  
‘But even the great General Ironwood makes mistakes, and at this point in the story, he had dropped the ball big time,’ he continued gravely. ‘There was another Valish team competing in the tournament, and I was pretty close to them. They were Team GOLD, and I’m sure you’ll recognise the name of their leader: Glynda Goodwitch.’  
Qrow took Winter’s interested hum as a signal to continue.  
‘Her teammates included our enthusiastic announcer Bartholomew Oobleck, and if you thought Barty was a jumpy little dynamo who drinks coffee like I drink liquor now...then there was Llewellyn Voski. Didn’t know him too well. He fell of my radar a while ago, haven’t seen him in years. And then there was Delwyn Elwood. Crafty little son of a bitch, may he rest in peace.’ He silently raised his drink forward, as if toasting an invisible partner, before finishing the rest in a mighty gulp.  
‘Now about Glynda,’ he continued. ‘Your dad didn’t interact with her team that much. Llewellyn was a Faunus, so he wanted nothing to do with them. James did, and he got along with them pretty well, especially Glynda. Nobody else saw it, but I did. The way they looked at each other, the little touches every now and again, all when they thought no one else was looking. I didn’t mind at all, personally. I thought it was nice until it all blew apart.  
‘One morning, when the tournament was in full swing, Glynda came to Summer and Raven in tears. She told them everything about their relationship, and she told them that they just had a huge fight. I don’t remember what it was about, and I doubt either she or the general do either. Teenagers always fight over the stupidest things. As fate would have it, the lots for the doubles round were decided, and wouldn’t you know it? Summer Rose and Raven Branwen of Beacon versus James Ironwood and Silbern Schnee of Atlas were scheduled to fight that morning. In all the years I’ve known them, I had never seen them more pumped for a fight. Ladies’ honour or some such. Raven was out for blood, and Summer wasn’t keen to stop her.’  
‘I imagine they had quite the fight cut out for them,’ Winter cut in, taking another measured ship. ‘But General Ironwood and Father are very skilled fighters, but to see them in their prime...’  
‘The odds weren’t too promising, sure,’ Qrow admitted. ‘Schnee had that Semblance of yours that could do practically anything he put his mind to, and he had that sword that could unfurl into some razor whip that could up his range by a dozen or so metres. Jimmy had that gun of his even back then. Simple in form and function, but he could blow you in half if he hit a weak spot in your Aura.’ Another glass of dark liquor slid over the counter to him, and picked it up with a wide grin, his eyes mischievous and proud.  
‘They never stood a chance,’ he proclaimed. ‘Raven just teleported inside Jimmy’s range and took him into the red with one hit. Like I said before, your dad was a pretty good fighter, and he could give even the best of us a run for our money in a straight fight. Too bad for him that Summer never fought a straight fight in her life. She had this Semblance...it was sort of like teleportation, only not in the same way as Raven. She could only swap places with someone, but with those knives of hers, she never hit him in the same place twice in a row. She kept going in and back out to safety before he could react, always keeping him off-balance, and he just couldn’t keep up. It was all over in minutes, but before we could celebrate, Silbern caught up to us, and he was _pissed._ He, the heir of the SDC and one of Atlas’ best students, had been roundly thrashed in front of the whole world by a girl twenty centimetres shorter and thirty kilos lighter, so it was understandable. He said it was only natural that Valishmen would resort to trickery to beat someone on his level, and then he called Summer...something less than gentlemanly.’  
‘So that was when you struck him?’ Winter asked, enraptured by the story.  
‘We all did,’ he confirmed. ‘All at the same time. STRQ was a team of many talents, but the one that we valued the most, and yet went the most underappreciated, was our skill at synchronised face punching.’  
At this point, Winter could no longer help herself. She chuckled lightly, and once the seal was broken, she laughed harder than she had in weeks, enough to make her stomach ache and turn her giggles into breathless wheezes. She could not understand it as she wiped mirthful tears from her eyes. Did she have too much to drink already? Either way, she found she could finally take her mind off the horror of the last inspection.  
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Qrow droned. ‘After that, Glynda and Jimmy kind of made up. Only kind of, mind you. Summer took the cup home, and your dad never looked any of us in the eye again. Total prick, though I’m sure you knew. I haven’t the slightest what that girl saw in him...’ Winter’s mirth was cut short in heartbeat, suspicion creeping over her as she considered his words.  
‘What girl?’ she asked cautiously.  
‘One of the other two teammates,’ he answered. ‘She followed him around, and it was pretty obvious she had a thing for him. Can’t imagine why. Can’t even remember her name. What was it? Reina? Rila? Rylai?’  
‘Rhea Xylander,’ Winter interrupted, her expression grave. The simple act of mentioning that name flooded her mind with dark memories, and her good mood was now well and truly gone.  
‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Qrow nodded, pleased that he was finally remembering. He saw the pensive look on Winter’s face, and recognised the change in her. ‘You knew her?’  
‘Of course I knew her,’ Winter confirmed. ‘She was my mother.’

Despite her mild level of intoxication, thoughts of her mother had a very sobering effect on Winter. That little detail on the end of Qrow’s story captured her imagination in a way she did not want it, and now she could not stop imagining scenarios of much younger version of her parents fighting alongside each other as members of Team JSPR, despite knowing full well how it all end ended. It had been years since Winter had thought about her mother, and she could not remember the last time she spoke of her. More than her father did, almost certainly. Spontaneously, she decided to tell Qrow a story of her own. She could not tell if it was the sights of the Atlesian military-turned-White Fang base, which had her wake up sweating for the past three days, the drink or if she was simply in a storytelling mood. She started talking, and she hardly stopped.  
‘You’re forgetting the third member of the team,’ she began. ‘Phoebus Brownlow. He was once the captain of Schnee Manor’s security team, and a very capable Huntsman even to his dying day. He was like an uncle to me—why, he was more of a father figure to me than my own ever was! He used to tell me and Weiss stories of the missions he used to go on, but I was always suspicious about how the way he talked about my parents was at odds with how I saw them. He talked about how my father was passionate and rash, about how Mother was always headstrong and fearless. I could see it in his eyes that something had happened to them, something that changed them. I presume it was something that happened on the same mission the General was injured.’ Winter was staring too intently on her drink to notice Qrow wincing. That was a story she deserved to hear, but only after she had said her piece.  
‘Who knows?’ she shrugged. ‘Perhaps my mother was as energetic and powerful as Pheobus claimed, but after I was born, something changed in her. For as long as I could remember, Mother was always sickly and frail, to the point where even a walk through the grounds was exhausting. By the time I was eight, she suffered two miscarriages, and the third pregnancy, which resulted in Weiss, left her in a delicate state. She was bedridden, and her health showed no signs of improving. Father threw himself into his work, and all I had was Uncle Phoebus. Neither I nor Father had interacted much with the baby. I think that, however irrational it might have been, we resented her for putting her mother. I think a part of him still resents her, even to this day.  
‘Anyway,’ she continued, passing her empty glass to the bartender with a deep sigh, ‘Weiss was eighteen months old when we were told that Mother had deteriorated to a dire state, and that she was requesting a visitor. She could have asked for Father, or even Uncle Phoebus, but instead she asked for me. I was still young, but I knew full well the significance of the visit. Now, I’m not going to bemoan my fate, nor will I get into some puerile competition over who’s suffered most, but I doubt you would envy the position of a nine-year-old girl visiting her mother’s deathbed.’  
_‘At least you got to say goodbye,’_ Qrow thought, but he held his tongue, and took another draught from his drink.  
‘I sat down by that bed and saw the most wretched thing in my life,’ Winter said darkly, sniffing once as she willed herself to stay together. ‘If it wasn’t for the medical equipment beeping away, you would think she was already dead. She was little more than a husk staring vacantly at me, her eyes filled with death just as they always were. I lost myself at the sight of it. Like the petulant child I was, I cursed the names of all the gods I could recall, for fating her to this position. I cursed my father, who couldn’t even be bothered to make time to say goodbye to his wife. And most of all, I cursed my sister, who destroyed her body to that extent in the first place.  
‘When those words left my mouth, the most amazing and terrifying thing I have experienced happened,’ she confessed. Tears brimmed as the ghost of a smile faded onto her face, her hands shaking as the memories. ‘I always remembered my mother as almost sickeningly demure, submissive, patient to a fault and all too forgiving. Yet as soon as I insulted my baby sister, she raised herself up, reached out and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck with a strength I thought she was physically and mentally incapable of. She glared at me with eyes that burned brighter than they did even at her healthiest. With a voice that held more steel than I heard even from Father, she told me I was a damned fool if that was what I really believed! She calmed down quickly, as if reminding herself that she was dying, and lay back down. She said that despite her loyalty to Father and her faith in the gods, her love for me and Weiss outstripped everything, and that the very thought of us hating each other broke her heart. A doting mother, even to the end.  
‘She told me that before she departed, she wanted me to understand a few things about Father,’ she glowered. ‘Though she loved him with all her heart, he never felt the same way about her. He could not feel that way for anyone. He only gave my mother a second glance because she was useful to him, first as a teammate, and then as a wife. He gauged everyone he met as to whether they would be an asset or a liability, even his own family. What others felt meant less than nothing to him, and by the time my mother realised this, she was already far too deep in love. Why, if she wasn’t already dying, he would have thrown her away ages ago. I couldn’t understand. I was only a child who idolised her father, but even I couldn’t deny it.  
‘The dying like to have the living make promises, but she only asked my one thing,’ Winter revealed as she took a deep drink, a tear dripping down as she closed her eyes. ‘She asked me to look after Weiss. She knew that Father would push to her fullest extent, so he could know for sure that she was an asset. She hoped that I would be the best big sister anyone could be, to make sure that I would be there when no one else was, to not let him twist her into a miniature version of himself. What little girl could deny her mother such simple requests? No sooner did the word leave my lips, she...’ she sniffled, and a few more tears gushed form her one exposed eye. ‘It’s like my agreement was that last assurance, that small peace of mind she needed to...to finally move on...’ Without thinking, Qrow reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. If Winter was surprised by this, she did not show as she leaned into his chest and wept silently.

They remained this way for a few minutes, until Winter’s sobs receded, and finally ebbed away into silence.  
‘Forgive me,’ she murmured, pushing herself out of the older Huntsman’s embrace with a sniff. ‘I don’t know what came over me...’  
‘You don’t need to explain anything to me,’ Qrow counselled. ‘What you were just elling me about...digging up memories like that would do that to just about anyone.’  
‘I’m aware,’ Winter nodded, her air of professional stoicism and unflappability already returning despite the melancholy smirk on her face. ‘I haven’t cried in years, and I don’t think of Mother very often. It’s possible the two are related.  
‘Anyway,’ she sighed, taking another sip, ‘I did my best to be a positive force in my sister’s life. Gods know she needs as many as she can get, especially after Uncle Phoebus was killed by the White Fang four years ago. Father was impressed with her progress as an academic, a socialite and a Huntress-in-training; so much so that he made her the new heiress after he disinherited me.’  
‘Now, why would he do that to such a talented and intelligent young woman?’ Qrow asked sardonically. Despite the wry humour in his tone, Winter could tell he expected a serious answer. She rarely told anyone why, but she decided he could be trusted as much.  
‘I already told you,’ she said darkly, raising her glass to her lips, her eyes clouded over with resignation. ‘My father measures everyone by how useful they are to him, nothing more and nothing less. And my father...has little use for a barren heiress.’ Qrow was silent as she finished her drink, processing what he just heard.  
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he glowered, his growling voice still broadcasting the sincerity of the apology. ‘So...’ he sighed, his anger disappearing as soon as it manifested, ‘Where do you plan to go now? Thinking of taking up my offer and helping me keep an eye on my favourite niece?’  
‘I’m afraid I must decline,’ Winter replied, pushing her arm on the bar as she stood up. ‘I still have one more base to inspect, and then I must return to Atlas to deliver a full report. I’ve been away from my sister for far too long.’  
‘I understand,’ Qrow nodded, watching as she began to walk away. ‘It’s good that you’re still so close to your sister. When I talk to Raven, it’s considered a good day if we don’t draw our weapons.’ Winter scoffed curtly.  
‘Weiss and I have our difficulties, but our relationship hasn’t deteriorated that far,’ she boasted. She turned her back proudly, stepping purposefully towards the stairs towards the surface.  
‘Qrow, she called as her foot touched the first step. He craned his neck, engaging his attention on her turned back. ‘The next base is only a few kilometres out of the city. I can take my ship there, conduct my inspection and return to Atlas in less than two days.’ She turned slightly, just enough to let him see her confident smirk. ‘I think I can afford to stick around for a while.’ With that, she continued to climb the dark stairs to Mistral’s moonlit streets. Qrow chuckled quietly as he placed the order for another drink. The little stiff was already bending rules to do what she wanted, or at least what needed to be done.  
‘She’s learning fast,’ he laughed as he toasted the air with his fresh glass, ‘and Tai says I’m a bad influence!’ If she continued at this rate, then soon she would be ready. Even sooner if trouble followed Ruby. He cared little of what Ironwood thought on that matter. He would a Guardian out of her yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short piece I threw together in a fit of inspiration from the Moncon (and a lack of inspiration for my ongoing Madoka/Persona crossover). Here, I just decided to throw together some of my headcanons for STRQ and the Schnee family. I bet that Winter had an even more fucked up childhood than Weiss, but that's besides the point. Anyhow, lots of original names were put down, so let's round out these endnotes with a Colour Glossary!™
> 
> JSPR: Jasper. A reddish rock crystral.  
> Silbern Schnee: "Silbern" is German for "silver."  
> GOLD: Gold. Duh.  
> Llewellyn Voski: "Llewellyn" is taken from the Welsh word "llew", meaning "lion," since I envision him as lion Faunus. "Voski" is Armenian for "gold."  
> Delwyn Elwood: "Delwyn" is Welsh for "white" or "pale". "Elwood" is Old English for "elder tree."  
> Rhea Xylander: "Rhea" is the name of the wife of Cronus, and a combination of the Ancient Greek words for "flow" and "ground." "Xylander" is an uncommon German surname derived form the Greek words for "tree" and "man." Both names have earthy nature connotations.  
> Phoebus Brownlow: "Phoebus" is Greek for "bright" or "pure." "Brownlow" is Old English for "brown hill."


End file.
